Cord Jefferson Wields a Cudgel Against Egregious Race-Posturing in His Intensely Likeable Farce, ‘American Fiction’

“American Fiction,” the debut feature from screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson, has forever endeared itself to my heart for the pettiest of reasons: the film takes a potshot at Karl Ove Knausgård, the Norwegian writer who achieved international fame by raising navel-gazing to previously unimagined heights. Mr. Knausgård deserves whatever brickbats that come his way, particularly given that he titled his award-winning series of autobiographical tracts “Min Kamp,” or “My Struggle,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to “Mein Kampf.” The other person who is name-checked during Mr. Jefferson’s film — two times by my count and not in the most advantageous of terms — is Tyler Perry. Were the digs at this hugely successful playwright, actor and director culled from “Erasure,” the 2001 novel by Percival Everett on which Mr. Jefferson based his film? Mr. Perry has come in for criticism over his career not only for the quality of his output, but for his representation of African-American life. “The reductive view of Blackness,” writes Mr. Jefferson, “makes me angry.”Mr. Perry’s middle-brow entertainments are the least of the director’s worries. “Why,” Mr. Jefferson wonders, “is American culture fascinated with Black trauma,” citing mainstream depictions of slavery, rap music and drug use? Even the most cursory consumer of popular culture couldn’t have helped but notice the spate of films and television programs detailing the travails of Black America released in the years following the death of George Floyd. Nor has the ascendance of identity politics, with its emphasis on victimization and by-the-book racialism, done much to illuminate the complexities inherent in human culture.How effectively does “American Fiction” illuminate, in Mr. Jefferson’s words, “the struggle to be seen as a discrete being, whole and specific, with an interior life that goes well beyond strangers’ assumptions?” Very effectively, not least when the humor is both at its most sly and its most obvious. The press elite is treated with peculiar and very funny causticity as are, not unrelatedly, white liberals. If Mr. Jefferson can be said to wield a cudgel in his depictions of Hollywood machers, literary do-gooders and avaricious academics, then he’s in good company. He’s as cynical, in his own moderate way, as W.C. Fields (“Never Give Sucker an Even Break”), Billy Wilder (“Ace in the Hole”) or Richard Russo (“Straight Man”). Even at his most caricaturish — say, the group of writers seen here tasked with bestowing a literary prize — Mr. Jefferson is closer to the mark than a casual observer might think.At the center of “American Fiction” is Thelonious Ellison — “Monk” to friends and family — a professor of English literature and author of a run of books based on Greek antiquity. His novels, though respected, don’t do much business — the top of the New York Times bestseller list hasn’t yet blessed Monk. From the get-go, we learn that he bristles at being pigeonholed. In a hilarious scene that takes place in a Barnes and Noble-like megastore, Monk flummoxes a store clerk by taking an armful of his books out of the “African American” section and attempting to wedge them into whatever space is available in “Literature.”Adding insult to injury, Monk learns that his latest effort has been turned down by publishers because it “isn’t Black enough.” Fed up and fueled by drink, Monk sits down at his keyboard and comes up with “My Pafology,” a novel in which every trope about the “reality” of African-American life is indulged and exaggerated. His manager Arthur (John Ortiz, having the time of his life) is horrified by the result, but submits it to several publishers upon a dare from Monk. To their surprise, “My Pafology” is picked up for a six-figure paycheck. Given that Monk is in desperate need of funds — his mother Agnes (the veteran actress Leslie Uggams) has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and needs full-time care — he agrees to the deal but only if the book is published under a pseudonym. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Stagg R. Leigh, gangster on the run.“American Fiction” is an intensely likable farce leavened with a current of melodrama that isn’t all that different from the kind of fare proffered by, imagine that, Tyler Perry. What audiences will make of Mr. Jefferson’s takedown of egregious race-posturing remains to be seen. As for that ending: it’s altogether too meta, given the tone of the movie, and counts as something of a cop-out. Still, it seems perversely on-the-money all the same. Did I mention Jeffrey Wright? He plays Monk as a man whose integrity and intelligence have set him back emotionally and does so in a manner that is as earthbound as it is brilliant. Mr. Wright has always been a formidable performer, but here he achieves something that is as individual and honest as the movie Mr. Jefferson set out to make and has now delivered.

Cord Jefferson Wields a Cudgel Against Egregious Race-Posturing in His Intensely Likeable Farce, ‘American Fiction’

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